Considering Gerrit for CFs

Hackers,

As an occasional CommitFest manager, I'm keenly aware of the makeshift
nature of the CommitFest app. If we want to go on using it -- and if we
want to attract additional reviewers -- we need to improve it
substantially. What Robert built for us was supposed to be a second
draft, not a final version.

The problem with doing it in-house is that the folks who can work on it
and maintain it will be taking time away from developing PostgreSQL. So
I've been keeping an eye on third-party OSS apps for contribution
management, waiting for one of them to mature enough that we can
seriously consider using it.

I think one of them has, now: Gerrit. http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/

I spent some time with OpenStack's main Gerrit admin while at LCA, and
was fairly encouraged that Gerrit would be a big step up compared to our
current ad-hoc PHP. However, gerrit is designed to be git-centric
rather than email-centric, so it would modify our current email-centric
workflow (e.g. reviews are posted via a special git commit). Unlike
other git tools, though, it expects patches and not branches, so that
would integrate well with what we do now. It would also require
supporting Java in our infrastructure.

The advantages in features would be substantial: a better interface,
ways to perform automated tasks (like remind submitters that a patch is
waiting on author), online diffs, automated testing integration, and a
configurable review workflow process.

The existing Gerrit community would be keen to have the PostgreSQL
project as a major user, though, and would theoretically help with
modification needs. Current major users are OpenStack, Mediawiki,
LibreOffice and QT.

Thoughts?

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com